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    Rrita Pula
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    Building Dwelling Thinking

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    Building Dwelling Thinking

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    2 views11 pages

    Heidegger

    Uploaded by

    Rrita Pula
    Building Dwelling Thinking

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 11
    BUILDING DWELLING THINKING In what follows we shall try to think about dwelling and building. This thinking about building does not presume t0 sliscover architectural ideas, let alone to give rules for building. ‘This venture in thought does not view building as an att or as 1 technique of construction; rather it traces building back ito ‘tha domain to which everything that is belongs. We ask: 1. Whats it to dwell? 2. How docs building belong to dwelling? 1 ‘We atin to dwelling, soi seams, only by means of bild- ing. The latter, building, has the former, dweling, ais goal. Sill, oot every building is a dwelling. Bridges and bangs, stadiums and power stations are buildings but not dwellings; railway stations and highways, dams and market halls ae built, but they ate aot dvelling places. Byen 50 these buildings axe ia the domain of our dwelling. That domain extends over, these buildings an yet isnot limited to the dwveling place. The truck deve is at home onthe highway, but he does na have his shelter there; the working womaa is at home ia the spinning mill, but does not have her dwelling place thete; the chief ‘engineer sat home inthe power station, but he doesnot dwell, there, These buildings house man. He inhabits them and yet dos not dwell ia them, when to dwell means merely that we take shelter in them. Ta foday’s housing shortage even tis much a5 146 POETRY, LANGUAGE, THOUGHT is reascuring and to the good; residential buildings do indeed provide shelter; today’s houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open to ait, light, and sun, but—do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that dvelling occurs in thein? Yet those buildings that are not dwelling places ze- ‘main in turn determined by dwelling insofae as they Serve man’s dwelling, Thas dwelling would in aay case be the end that pro- Sides overall building. Dwelling and building are related as end and means. However, as long as tis is all we have in mind, we take dwelling and building as two separate activities, an idea that has something correct in it. Yet at the same time by the ‘means-end schema we block our view of the essential relations. For building is not merely 2 means and a way toward dwelling to build is in itself already to dwell, Who tells us this? Who gives us a standard at all By which we can take the measure of| the nature of dwelling and building? It is language that tells us about the nature of a thing, pro- vided that we respect language's own nature. Jn the meantime, to be sure, there rages round the earth an unbridled yet clever talking, writing, and broadcasting oF spoken words, Min acts as ‘though he were the shaper and master of language, while infact Janguage remains the master of man, Pethaps it is before ll else ‘man’s subversion’ of ‘bit relation of dominance that drives his, nature into alienation. That we retain a concern for cate in speaking i al to the good, but it is of no help to us as long as language still srves us even then only as a means of expression. ‘Among all the appeals that we human beings, on our part, can help to be voiced, language is the highest and everywhere the fi What, then, does Baron, building, mem? The Old English and High German word for building, ban, means to dwell ‘This signifies: o remain, to stay in a place. ‘The real meaning. of the verb ben, namely, to dwell, has been lost to us, But a ‘covert trce of it has been preserved in the German word Nacb ‘bai, neighbor, ‘The neighbor i in Od English the neabgebur; Building Dwelling Thinking 1 rneab, near, and gebue, dweller. The Nachbar is the Nachgebus, the Nachgebauer, the near-dweler, he who dwells nearby. The verbs buri, Biren, benren, benron, all signify dwelling, the abode, the place of dwelling, Now to be sure the old word bun rot only tells us that baxer, to build, is really to dwell it also _ves us a clue a5 to how we have to think about the dwelling it signifies. When we speak of dwelling we usually think of an activity that man performs alongside many otber activities. We ‘work here and dwell there. We do not merely dwell—that ‘would be virtual inativity—we practice a profession, we do business, we travel and lodge on the way, nov here, now there. Baven originally means to dwell, Where the word haven still speaks in its original sense it also says ow far the nature of dwelling reaches. That is, banen, buan, bb, beo ate our word bin in the versions: ich bin, Lam, da bist, you ate, the impera- tive Form bis, be. What then does ich bit mean? The old word asen, to which the bin belongs, answers: ich bin, dau bist mean: 1 dwell, you dwell. The way in which you are and 1 am, the manner in which we humans are on the eath, is Buan, dwelling. To be 2 human being means to he on the extth as a mortal. It ‘means to dwell. The old word auen, which says that man is insofar as be dwells this word davem however also means at the same time to cherish and protec, to preserve and cate for, specifically to tll the soil, to cultivate the vine, Such building only takes care-—it tends the growth that ripens into its fruit ofits own accord. Building in the sense of preserving and mur- turing is not making anything. Shipbuilding and temple-build- ing, on the other hand, do in 2 certain way make theie own ‘works. Here building, in contrast with cultivating, isa construct ing. "Both modes of building—building as cultivating, Latin

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